by Henry Green
We had not far to go and, once outside, it did not seem so very heavy up above, only, as always when on the move in a bad raid, there was that added awareness, you sat forward, you waited for a bomb, for a crater not marked out with lamps, for wreckage, for glass to cut the tyres, for anything, but not on this particular evening for what was coming to us.
As we went the thin mist was like a light over the street, broken by black shadows caused by the moon behind tall buildings; in the square one white building stood out in this watery light that was a kind of tinge of blue, only a colour because of that white block of stone ahead. On the ground everything seemed entirely deserted, dead, but the sky was alive still. We were almost there when a torch flashed on and off some thirty yards in front from the height of a man’s thigh straight at us, but in the unsubstantial glow beyond our hooded headlamps it was not possible to see who held the torch until we were right on the man. He was a policeman.
He said in the hurried voice men use when they have a lot to say and no time, yet they hesitate in their speech, ‘There’s someone fallen down a manhole.’
‘Over this way,’ another called from the right and flashed his torch. I realised it was this I had dreaded all evening. As we pulled over I called to them behind to get ready, out of its locker, the long line, that is the 120 feet of rope we carry.
In the shadow right under a building three men were kneeling by a hole. This turned out to be one of those manholes, about six feet by four, to a sewer, of such a kind that the cover is usually hidden until some major disaster requires it to be raised or broken open. The store had been severely damaged by fire, the site was not yet handed over by the Brigade and this cover, which had been removed at the time of the fire and never put back, was not marked in any way, that is to say there were no lights round the opening in the blackout. The individual I now saw, as I knelt in my turn, the long line between my hands, had simply fallen down it.
By the cinema light of our electric torches we could see fifteen feet down this opening another cover swinging on a shaft or pivot through the centre of its length, half of it pointing to the sky and half to the smell thirty-five feet beneath where muck in the flooded sewer rushed past, glimmering with solids. Draped over this cover edge, looking flat in the light given by our shrouded torches, grotesquely caught up, dreadfully still, most like a rag doll made full size he was so limp, lay this unfortunate it was now our job to get out. The sweet sickly stench, cloying, hanging about like a taste, like decaying hay, was so thick you expected his image to shimmer where it lay in its sort of box. Through the silence in which we watched we began to hear faint regular groans.
One of the policemen called out, ‘You are all right now, old mate, the Fire Brigade’s here to get you out.’ Then I realised, feeling helpless, that it was up to us.
Now there was a ledge four inches wide running round the sides fifteen feet down and on which, presumably, the lower cover was meant to rest when shut. We carry two ladders, one short, one long, and I saw we should have to get one of these and stand the end on this ledge. In that way a man could climb down to put the line round the poor devil’s shoulders. I told the crew to bring the long ladder. Charlie, as he ran back to get it down, called out the short one would be best. I wanted to argue. Then I thought there was no time. While they were fetching it I tried to make the appropriate knot, a running bowline, on one end of the line. The first I made was a slippery hitch. I began again. I had finished it by the time they brought the ladder up.
A short ladder is in two halves. One half has on the base two elbows, or inverted U-shaped pieces of iron, which fit on to any rung of the other half. It is so designed to enable a man to put both halves together against a building and slide the top one up to the required height. Then all that has to be done is to clip one to the other by those bits of iron, and the ladder is safe to climb. But to lower a short ladder the two halves must be lashed together with a line or they will drop apart. The crew was laying the ladder out, a policeman was calling down, ‘They won’t be long now,’ another shone his torch for us and I could not find the other end of the long line. I kept on saying as I fumbled, ‘Give me the other end.’ Meantime the crew was making a hash of laying out the two halves. They were talking about it. They had got the iron pieces jammed when I found the free end of my line. I began to lash the two halves too soon. I made a clove hitch. Then I had to untie it until the ladder was straight. They got it straight at last. I made the knot again.
But in less time than it takes to read we were shipshape and lowering the ladder down, having to take care not to touch the injured man as we did so. He was too badly hurt to hang on. He balanced.
I was still sure the ladder would not extend far enough to reach the ledge. As we lowered away I blamed myself for not insisting on having the long one. But I was wrong, it did reach after all so that everything just did nicely.
Now that we were working on it, his mid-air tomb looked very bleak, there was no room to move, and the idea of the cramped climb down to him was not attractive. But it was my place in the crew to do so, and as I stepped back to get the other end of the line on which I had made my running bowline one of the policemen said, ‘If you don’t want to go down I’ll do it.’ But he made no move. In any case I meant to go. I went.
It was simple to get to him. While I did so I said ‘I’m coming.’ When I stood on a level with his shoulders as he lay absolutely motionless I saw he was heavy, thick-set, and noticed that he had stopped groaning. Someone called from above, ‘He’s crushed his left side.’ I slipped the noose over his shoulders. I said, ‘You’re all right now, cocker, we have got a line round you, only don’t move. It will hurt though, when we pull you up.’ He spoke. He said, ‘I don’t care,’ in a level whisper, ‘so long as you get me out of this bloody ’ole.’
I had made a big noose and as this lay round his shoulders, with the lower part by his outspread hands, he could just move these a trifle to get them over the rope, so that when we tightened the knot it should come up under his armpits.
I told them above to take up the slack. They did this. I crept round the ledge, holding on to the noose, in order to tighten this as much as possible from behind. I got into the far corner and pulled the rope tight. Then they hauled away. He was drawn up without a sound or a movement from him, slowly. In the end they laid hold of his coat, they dragged him over the edge with their fingers. Then he was safe.
To steady myself I put out my hand to the cover off which he had been raised. It swung slightly on its pivot. I had not realised that it was loose. I was at once, for the first time, aware of the sewer twenty feet below though I could, I know, no longer smell it.
The ledge was four inches wide. The rubber boots we wear are clumsy things, heavy, and as wide as that ledge. I had no hold on anything, dare not touch the cover, had my back wedged into a corner with one foot at right angles to the other. I was stuck.
I called Charlie to come below with a line. As he came into view climbing down he said, ‘Hullo, Henry.’
I said, ‘I’m stuck, Charlie.’
‘Well, hang on to this, then,’ and he gave me the line. But he had to reach over to give me his hand before I could shuffle back.
I walked to the station to report and heard the barrage, which had been incessant, for the first time since the policeman had flashed his torch. In the watchroom the light was blinding. They rang up local control. Local control said to the telephonist as though she had done it all, ‘You should have stayed put and called us on with the BA,’ that is the Breathing Apparatus. What we had forgotten, and what I had not had, because perhaps the manhole was so big that it could get away, was sewer gas. But if we still don’t know what this can do to you, at least the four of us know how it smells.
The injured man was taken away in an ambulance. We have not heard anything of him. He may have died.
MR JONAS
(Published in No. 3 Folios of New Writing, 1941)
⎯
Gr
een wrote to Lehmann: ‘I have just let a girl read this and she laughed herself into a state of tears she thought it was so bad. … In fact she laughed so much at the first page that she put it into her mouth as you can see from the lipstick. . . . Anyway I thought I’d put some commas in this time. I’ve tried to do it in a more spectacular way to suit the more spectacular blaze. It’s true, of course, as the other one [“A Rescue”].’
⎯
Above us, in the night, as we drew up, in the barrage, the sky, from street level, seemed to be one vast corridor down which, with the speed of light, blue double wooden doors as vast were being slammed in turn. From outside the fire station, at which we were waiting to be ordered on to a particular address, that is to the next blaze on the list, we could see three fires, one of which was unattended yet.
The raid was in full swing. Already it would have been possible to read in the reddish light spread by a tall building sixty yards away, the top floors of which, with abandon, in recklessness, with fierce acceptance had exchanged their rectangles for tiger-striped hoops, great wind-blown orange pennants, huge yellow cobra tongues of flame. Three thin, uncoloured, plumes of water were being played on to the conflagration by firemen in the street. The extremities of these jets were broken into zigzags, moving up and down as the force of gravity overcame the initial pressure at the nozzle. This gave the effect of three flags of water rippling in a breeze. The plumes, when all pressure was spent, dipped weakly to those flames in a spatter of drops. It was as though three high fountains which, through sunlight, would furl their flags in rainbows as they fell dispersed, had now played these up into a howling wind to be driven, to be shattered, dispersed, no longer to fall to sweet rainbows, but into a cloud of steam rose-coloured beneath, above no wide water-lilies in a pool, but into the welter of yellow banner-streaming flames.
Accustomed, as all were, to sights of this kind, there was not one amongst us who did not now feel withdrawn into himself, as though he had come upon a place foreign to him but which he was aware he had to visit, as if it were a region the conditions in which he knew would be something between living and dying, not, that is, a web of dreams, but rather such a frontier of hopes or mostly fears as it may be in the destiny of each, or almost all, to find, betwixt coma and the giving up of living.
Violence was there in so strange a shape as to appear a lamb, and danger also, but, in the extravagance by which this was displayed, it seemed no more than a rather deadly warmth we could feel, and which, at the distance, was all that remained of that heat, which turned those fountains into steam.
The breaking pattern of rings which rain, lost in colour, can form on the surface of water, was no more likely than this other, blasted white into clouds. But the black goldfish, gulping at the drops, were more conscious than firemen, unafraid, seated hands on knees, silent beneath that awful, the wide magnificence of that sight.
Not many minutes had gone by before one of our crew had criticised the way in which these three jets were being played, so far below the fire that there was no force left behind them. He said they should have been taken to a neighbouring roof from which they could be directed down in a torrent into the flames. He pointed. Looking up again, we saw the writhing mass, the pointed tongues had leapt still higher, huge sparks now flew out in showers and there was more black smoke than steam. This, as it rolled away, was coloured on the under side a darker red, the purple of a fire momentarily beyond control.
More pumps drew up. Those who manned them began, in the half dark, to look about for friends. Then, from out of the fire station, some five or six came trotting. These were the number ones, those in charge of each unit, coming back to their pumps with the address to which each had been ordered. Not able to distinguish crews quickly in this light they were calling out the numbers of their own sub-stations. It was hard to realise all the noise which was made by those pumps already at work, the roaring of the fire, and that continuous battering up above until we had noticed how difficult it was for these men to make themselves heard, shouting, as they passed, into the backs of the tenders.
When he found us our man shouted the address, then climbed in front with the driver. As we drove off, we asked each other which street he had named, but no one behind had heard. And taking, as we did, the first turn to the left, then right, we were far enough from the blaze to lose all sight of it. We did not know where we might be. We had drawn up no more than ninety yards away, but the only sign of what we had left was in the pink roofs of an office building opposite, glowing in the reflection. The noise was so much less.
We had come to a very different problem.
There was almost quietness as we got down. It was very dark. All I could see was a thick mass of smoke or steam, it was impossible to tell one from the other, surging heavy from a narrow passage. We were told to run hose out, up this alley. One man took a length, snapped the coupling in, laid out the fifty foot and went back for more, while another snapped his coupling in where the first had ended, went on, and, while he in his turn was back to get a second length, yet another went on from where the second had finished. The hose was laid without the men taking in their surroundings.
Some living things turn to the light, we went by instinct into the deepest dark. I hurried, stumbled, into this pall of smoke and steam, when suddenly, after my boots had crunched on grit, I came to the debris.
What I saw, a pile of wreckage like vast blocks of slate, the slabs of wet masonry piled high across this passage, was hidden by a fresh cloud of steam and smoke, warm, limitless dirty cotton wool, disabling in that it tight bandaged the eyes. Each billow, and steam rolls unevenly in air, islanding a man in the way that he can, to others, be isolated asleep in blankets. Nor did the light of a torch do more than make my sudden blindness visible to me in a white shine below the waist. There was nothing for it but to go on towards voices out in front, but climbing, slipping up, while unrolling the hose, I felt that I was not a participant, that all this must have been imagined, until, in another instant, a puff of wind, perhaps something in the wreckage which was alight below the surface, left me out in the clear as though in, and among, the wet indigo reflecting planes of shattered tombs deep in a tumulus the men coughing ahead had just finished blasting.
It was impossible to work fast. The number one was shouting for that last connection, into which he could snap the nozzle, long before we could get it to him. In the struggle, with the directions we yelled at each other, the scene came real again. But when everything was laid out, and word had been sent back to turn the water on, a vault quiet fell once more as we stood waiting in smoke which came by waves, hot, acrid, making the eyes run, and bringing on a cough that hurt the lungs.
Water is never got quickly, perhaps because it seems so long to wait before the fire. This I could not see yet from the place I had reached, on top of the wreckage, beyond the steam at last but into smoke, and, as I could now realise in the intervals of sight, on a mass of rubble about fifteen foot up from the roadway. Below, to my left, a Rescue Squad was silently getting into the escape shaft of a basement shelter, climbing one by one into the earth, as it might be into the lower chamber of a tomb. On my right, the steam, which had bothered us as we climbed, was still belching out. There must have been a gas main alight beneath the debris for whitish yellow flames were coming out, as I could now see five yards away round a great corner, in darker blue, of sculptured coping stone, curved in an arc up which this yard-high maple leaf of flame came flaring, veined in violet, then died, then flared again.
In the quiet, I could not believe. The guns had given up firing. There were no aeroplanes. Another few moments drowned in smoke and then I could make out, forward, a concentration of torches in an archway five foot above where I stood, in what might have been a door when the ruins had been an office building, and figures that moved, but were too flat, too indistinct to seem real. I was wringing wet with sweat. At that minute there was absolute silence. I struggled closer. Broken gas pipes caught at my rub
ber boots, wires at my helmet, jagged spars of wood lunged at my flanks, and, at my lungs writhed briars of smoke. I heard a man steadily coughing. Then I could see the top of him. He was sitting in that archway, in battledress I thought, a mug between his hands, and coughing, coughing. In everything but sound it was too vague. He seemed, by the light of the torch on his belt, to be sitting on a taut sheet of steam.
The number one took it into his head I had a message from the pump. He wanted to know about the water, why it still had not come. We both had a fit of coughing. When he could, he told me the Rescue people had a man in under there, pointing to where the smoke was a rising wall. I was sure the individual sitting on his sheet, still coughing hopelessly, on and on, while every now and then he retched, was someone who had been brought out. Then he spoke. With difficulty he said they would have to have oxygen breathing apparatus, that it was too thick without. I realised that he must be the leader. Again he began to cough. My number one went back to order on the oxygen. Taking his place, I came up to another member of our crew. He told me, between his spasms, that this man was trapped at the bottom of a small jagged hole at our feet, and that before the Rescue Squad had been driven out, they had just been able to see him.
There was a shout of ‘water’ behind, the hose kicked once or twice and then jumped tight, the jet sprang out solid, white. The leader got up. He stood. His legs were still hidden but I could now see they were in steam which was drawn in by the draught of the doorway, steam running compactly like a swollen brook. He said, ‘not too near or you’ll drown him, he’s just below you there, play it over here against this wall, the fire’s creeping along from behind. Come on, he’s alive.’ We played the water where he said and then were blotted out immediately in more than night, a forgetting, a death of black, the thick smoke, it let no air in, of a fire smacked out below, but which, we knew, would be up again if we did not almost flood it. ‘By Christ, you’ll drown him,’ he shouted. But we judged, at the depth that man must be lying, that we should get more steam and smoke than he would get water. Now everything became too real in our fight for breath, too solid in the heavy river pressing without weight, in the enemy that seeks out to weaken, to dam life out from the source.